Denial at three in the morning
by Lika2
Summary: Christine Stuart goes home after the events of "Anne of Ingleside" and does not sleep.


Disclaimer: I doubt anyone wants Christine Stuart, even me and I think she's misunderstood. She, and others here, belongs to L.M.Montgomery

Rating: G (someone needs to write an NC-17 LMM fic, just for kicks.)

Denial at three in the morning (1/1) by Lika

"Night is beautiful when you are happy--comforting when you are in grief--terrible when you are lonely and unhappy." -Emily's Quest

She could not bring herself to admit that she was restless so she told herself it was amusement that kept her awake. It had been an entirely amusing evening, seeing an old flame and discovering that there were still sparks between them. To be sure he was still married to a much alive Anne Blythe. Well, a living Anne Blythe at least. Christine didn't know if she would call the distracted, uneasy woman whom Gilbert Blythe had barely looked at all evening _alive_.

Gilbert Blythe. Amazing how he had not changed over the years, had not grown any stouter or shown the middle-aged sag that Andrew had long before the sickness took him. Handsome as ever, Gilbert was, charming as the Redmond memories she had often escaped into had described him.

She would not have admitted that she had loved him back then. She had been eighteen and engaged to Andrew, who was as pompous and boring then as he was ten years into their pompous and boring marriage. She had been eighteen and had worn pretty dresses and had gone to dances and had laughed with the girls and had flushed crimson whenever Gilbert Blythe looked at her.

She remembered each one of those flushes.

The philopena they shared, the picnic at the Arm, the Negro church with the strange songs, the masquerade where she was the Spanish lady in a black velvet dress with a lace mantilla and fan. He too had remembered each of those. But she had been engaged and he had been in love with Anne Shirley long before he had entered Redmond College.

Anne had been different then, and the change in her amused Christine hugely. Back in Redmond, Anne had been a brilliant, gay, laughing girl, with moments of stateliness and the occasional temper that matched her red hair. Even in her middle age, the hair was as red as ever, her face still girlish and unblurred, with a figure that considering she had seven children was remarkably slim and upright. But her eyes had no spark in them, and her smile looked forced. She had not an interesting thing to say all night, she who had once been one of the brightest students in Redmond. All those brains, all that education, to become a housewife and a slave to seven – or was it six? – children. No wonder she had been so dull and dreary all evening. Having such a big family must have sapped up all her energy and intellect. She probably never left the house except to go to church.

It would explain all the resentment in every one of Anne's look. Christine had to smile when she remembered the way Anne looked at her. The poor, funny thing. Poor Anne, who had married Gilbert with high hopes of love and romance and had ended up in some dull provincial town having one baby after another, probably getting so caught up in the burden of motherhood that she had no time left for Gilbert.

Poor Gilbert. He did look tired and overworked. No doubt his job as a doctor kept him busy from dawn to dark, and to come home to a houseful of noisy children and that dazed, resentful wife who clearly hadn't been taking good care of him. The realization and humiliation that flashed briefly in Anne's eyes when Christine told Gilbert that he was overdoing it proved that Anne hadn't.

Christine would have taken excellent care of him. Being childless, she could devote all her energy to him. She was free to travel with him, go to parties and dances and entertain his colleagues, and he could come home after a long day at work to a quiet house where he could rest and listen to her talk as she poured tea for him. There'd be no children to interrupt that perfect adult solitude. Children were such nuisances, and it amused Christine that she had, as a bride, been disappointed because there had been no babies. After seeing what they did to Anne Blythe, she looked out the window into the night sky where the stars were gleaming overhead, and she thanked those stars for not giving her children.

She then turned away from the window and pulled the covers tighter around her in an attempt to shut out the night. There was another night, stored up in the dark recess of her mind that she never acknowledged, which was much like this night. It was shortly after Andrew died. She was lying awake in the big bed they had shared for so many long and silent years. Silent on his end. She had become a talker because he had always been so silent, and his disinterest only drove her to talk incessantly. But she had missed him, despite his lack of interest in her and their marriage. He was at least a body next to hers, another person in the house to talk to, and there was no child to keep her company now that he was gone. She was alone, and for a brief split of a very brief second, she saw her life stretched out before her as a long, lonely, monotonous road, going one long, lonely, monotonous way, unchanged and without a bend, until she died and no one remembered her.

It was a brief split of a very brief second that never repeated itself. As far as she was concerned, it never happened. Just like her voice never went the slightest bit hard when she told Anne, "I never cared for children, you know." She could not bring herself to admit that, so instead Christine concentrated on the very funny way Anne declared that perhaps Gilbert was pitying himself for not marrying her. It _was_ funny, how haughty and stately she got. At least something of her survived from Redmond other than the red hair. The memory of it entertained Christine so much that she had to laugh.

The moon that she and Gilbert had watched rise together was mocking her through the window, and she ignored it. She replayed the evening in her head instead, remembering with amusement how cold Anne and Gilbert were with each other, the compliments Gilbert paid her, how he listened to her in the garden, the bewildered look on Anne's face every time Christine spoke to her. She replayed them over and over again, until the dark blue of the night sky weaken into a grey mist and ushered in a new day, ripe for more amusement.

end


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